Previously, I often went to attend some offline activities held by Alibaba. Many times, I heard of some comments, for example, the president of a company is a passionate person or the enterprise president is also taking the post of the chairman or vice chairman of an association. As a large part of the enterprise culture comes from the founder, the charisma or the image of the president is vital to a company. Then here is a question: when it comes to enterprise management, is it essential to run a company with passion?
To answer this question, we should leave a person’s personality aside. Indeed the founder’s passion is important especially at the early stage of entrepreneurship or in a well-known giant corporate or tycoon. When at the early stage of entrepreneurship, the founder always has nothing but passion, so he has to inspire others with his dream and charisma. And the same goes for some big companies, in a giant corporate or tycoon, like Alibaba, its co-founder Jack Ma has been a preacher and people believe whatever he says.
However, for most small and medium sized enterprises, when their business and profit models are verified and their sales begin to soar up to a higher level, they need to turn their passion to profession. If the founder of a company is not professional, his team can not achieve the professionalism or the professional staff can not work well with him. Simply speaking, a professional financial manager or a human resource manager or a marketing manager stays up late and makes a report, when he reports it to the president, how bad it would be if the enterprise president can not recognize his effort. How can a company operate smoothly when its president can not communicate with his financial department, human resource department, marketing department, etc.?
